The background section provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
In health care settings, such as nursing facilities, care providers are supposed to store patient care records on services provided to patients. In related arts, patient care records are stored by recording a health care professional's verbal notes, which a voice recognition device analyzes. After analyzing the recorded voice, the voice recognition device stores details of the services provided to the patients. These details are used to charge the patient or a guardian thereof for the services afterwards.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2012/0136667 discloses a voice assistant system for storing a care plan for a resident or patient. In this system, a dedicated device, e.g., a voice assistant device, may provide voice outputs to a user, e.g., a care provider such as a certified nursing assistant (CNA), to provide information on task activities received from a central system. The dedicated device sequentially receives inputs from the user by voice recognition (VR).
According to the related art, information on care services is recorded primarily through text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) technologies. Thus, if the recorded speech is not clearly recognized by a voice recognition device due to noise or the like, provided services may not be charged. Also, since the voice recognition device analyzes each word, a considerable time may be required for the voice recognition. In addition, since the dedicated device is supposed to operate only in an online state, the dedicated device may not operate normally when a network connection between the dedicated device and the central system is unstable. As a result, it is difficult for the care provider to properly record or charge for care services provided to patients.
In order to overcome the drawbacks of the related art, a point of care documentation solution (POCS) has been introduced. The POCS allows a care provider, such as a CNA, to easily and accurately perform and record care services by checking details of the care services to be provided to patients and storing patient care records on services provided to the patients using a mobile device. The POCS can be implemented in a wireless network environment, and thus can support operations of the mobile device in an offline mode as well as in an online mode.
In the offline mode, e.g., when the mobile device moves to a shadow area, since the mobile device is disconnected from a central system, the care provider uses care information, such as information on patients, information on services to be provided to the patients, and so on, which has been downloaded and stored in a local database of the mobile device so that the care provider can provide the care services to the patients without interruption. However, care information stored in the local database may be exposed to risks such as leakage or illegal use thereof.